In the poultry industry where chickens and other type birds are processed for consumption by the removal of feathers, feet, head, viscera, etc., it is desirable to move the birds rapidly through the processing steps with as little interruption as possible while effectively processing the birds and to utilize as little manual labor as possible. Most poultry processing plants utilize overhead conveyor systems where the birds are suspended by their legs from shackles in a head-down attitude, and the shackles are closely spaced from one another and are progressively moved by the conveyor system through the various work stations in the processing plant.
Various automatic neck-breaking and neck-cutting machines have been developed and utilized in the past on poultry processing lines; however, the prior art machines have been somewhat ineffective in that they frequently fail to properly break the necks of the birds and/or cut the neck tissue, so that this step must be performed manually at a subsequent work station on the line, and in some prior art systems, the equipment for automatically performing this function is difficult to maintain or requires a special detour in the conveyor line where the birds are moved laterally, upwardly or downwardly. Also, some of the prior art systems break and cut the neck tissue of the birds at different locations on the length of the neck of the bird, which results in a lack of uniformity in the end product, and which may result in some difficulty in removing the trachea, esophagus and crop as subsequent work stations along the process line.